The Black Fox A Novel Of The Seventies (20 page)

"Do you know what is the proper name for it," he asked a little hurriedly, "when it is in this phase?" And then not waiting he told her, "Gibbous," adding, "but I see you are not interested in seeing nor in instruction, only in feeling and intuition."

True, she was not looking at the sky. She was drawing in deep breaths of the almost anaesthetic scent, and her reply was irrelevant, "Those night-smelling flowers are really too strong, aren't they. Their scent is hardly any longer that of blossoms, fresh and gay. They remind one more of the aroma of.. .."

"I was remarking to you about the moon," he answered.

His tone had sharpened and in his impatience he put his hand on her shoulder to make her attend. As he did so he glanced at her face. The moonlight, no doubt, would make it pale. It was dear, however, that her attention was not wandering. Her expression was fixed, rigid. She said nothing to his reproof but

actually took his fingers in hers—an intimacy that now startled him. She must be frightened. With her other hand she was pointing at the foot of the hedge. He saw what had caught her attention. He felt also the tremor of her fear run through him like a current. For the sight, at least at first glance, should not have shaken both of them so severely. Three yards away, at the base of the towering yew bridge, and just beyond the wide herbaceous border at which they stood, there shone up at them, almost at ground level, two small green-silver spots, like small fragments of reflected moonlight.

They stood still, trying to make out what in the yew-hedge's shadow could so catch the moonlight. Then as they watched, the two points moved, trailing after them a smear of black. It was as though the shadow of the hedge at this point began to protrude, until passing across the cultivated earth of the flowerbed, the black wedge touched the ghostly green of the mown grass-path on which they were standing. As the black smear moved toward them the dense scent of the stocks seemed to clot until it was rancid. No flower was ever so rank—it was animal ammonia at its sourest, the odor of an ill-kept civets cage. The shadow, now having touched the lawn at a couple of yards from their feet—it had passed obliquely across the flower-bed—ceased to move further. Instead it began to sink down until the oblong black area, that in outline had looked like a slinking animal, was resting flat on the ground. The ammoniacal odor now took on the nauseating stench of decay. The ground, however, seemed to be sopping up this blot of corruption and gradually the stifling gas of rotting flesh became again the strong animal ammonia that has in it the tang of burning hair and of scorched linen. Then as the grey-green of the lawn absorbed the last stain of black, the ammonia modulated and was lost once more in the heavy scent of the stocks.

The Dean found that he was clinging to his sister's arm as convulsively as she to his. Without a word they turned to the house. But, just as they were about to gain the threshold, his arm gave hers a wrench painful enough to rouse her from her numb fear. With his free arm he was striking at something. As she was twisted round by his grip she glanced at his face. He was looking up at the ceiling corner of the high window through which they were just going to pass. He snatched and tore with his free hand at what for a moment she couldn't see. Then he broke out,

"Can't the house be kept free of pests! Every corner has something weaving or spinning in it!''

Against the upper cornice of the French window, the light striking out and down from the chandelier within, showed her, as she took one more step forward, the outer anchor-strands of a big night spider's web. Her brother's face had brushed against and torn one of the lowest of these threads as he stepped over the threshold and some of the remainder of the web had wound round his forehead. He stumbled across the step, called out to her to close the leaves of the window, himself continuing to wipe his face and head with his handkerchief.

"Filthy," he muttered and she saw him shuddering. "Shut all the windows!" She obeyed, and then turned to look at him where he had seated himself by the empty hearth with his back to the window. He was huddled in a big chair with his head in his hands. Every now and then he picked with his fingers at face and scalp.

She glanced out at the garden. It looked as calm, as inviting as it had seemed when only so few minutes previously they had stepped out into it. She was a sane woman of considerable objectivity. She noticed, then, this fact, the present appearance of things, which was certainly the common-sense impression, and compared it with the nauseating panic she had felt when out there with her brother. She turned back and looked at him.

Certainly, however much she wished to dismiss the whole thing as a small inexplicable anomaly best dealt with by disregard, she could not call the whole thing a private fancy. Subjective it might be but he had been as much aware—of what she had experienced—as had she—perhaps more.

"Hadn't you better go to bed?"

"I suppose so, I suppose so."

His voice was uncertain, as uncertain as hers had been. But her uncertainty was polar to his. Her doubt, as she phrased the question, arose because she felt that what she said was less of a request than an order. She realized in a dim way that the curious "attack"—that was the word she picked under which to catalogue the anomaly—the attack that he had just had in the garden, had, like a capsize, reversed their situations, if only for a moment. What that might mean in the future, still less what actually had in the past caused this present situation, she did not ask herself—did not wish to do so, indeed felt that, for the time being, she must not. She, however, sounded her feelings and resolutions carefully, though she still shunned sorting her thoughts or memories. She found that if her head was muddled her heart was dear; high and steady enough so that she could view it plainly, quickly. She found that she knew two things: The curious foreboding that she had felt when he began to be amiable, that had gone. The crisis, whatever it might be, that she had dreaded, had arrived. And, like most brave but un-analytic people, she was glad—not happy but content—that whatever it was that she felt was in cover and had been dogging them, was now come into the open, now could be faced. The time for waiting, wondering whether one was not becoming tense and theatrical over nothing, doubting one's judgment, that phase was over. She preferred this sense of the rising storm to being fog-bound. She might have to go through a good deal, an ordeal perhaps, if that were not too histrionic a word for .a test, but she would be going ahead, making headway, yes (she found she was smiling incongruously, for into her mind floated the incongruous picture of Tissaphernes on her lap swelled to twice his size by the challenging smell of the fox), yes, give battle.

As her mind, or heart, made these its dispositions she watched her brother. After repeating to himself once again "I suppose so," he drew himself to his feet. Once he was standing up his resolution seemed somewhat recovered. Two silver bedroom candles stood on a small table by the door with matches beside them. He lit his at the second effort, and half turning to say "Good night" passed through the door.

She stood listening. In the stillness of the house—it was the younger servants' night out and Cook was an early retirer—she could hear his tread go along the passage, up the staircase and into his bedroom which was above the parlor. He was moving about methodically. At last all was quiet. She lit her own candle and turned off the small tap that extinguished the gas-fed chandelier, then went back to the window for a last look at the garden. The moon was now actually touching the top of the yew hedge. The effect of a white-masked watcher peering over a wall was ridiculously convincing. The rest of the place was therefore in dense shadow.

"How strange." she said quietly but aloud. 'We fear the calm and the rest of the night and think the day, in which our passions and resentments are unleased at each other, the safe and normal time, cheerful and fresh."

She turned back from looking at the almost level light of the moon. The cold beam passed over her shoulder into the salon. The room had now no other light in it. Her candle had gone out. She could see the tiny point of red which showed the still smouldering wick and could smell the rank incense of its smoke. For a moment a spasm of panic, as keen as that she had felt there in the garden, took her.

Then she understood. Something was attacking, but it had no real certainty of success. It had no purchase on her. If she refused to admit the fear, if she demanded why, on what grounds rational or moral, she should be frightened, then it would have to show itself or retire. She stood still with her back to the window. The tiny glow of the candle wick, the other side of the room, died down. The rank smell of smoulder died also. She walked over, lit the candle again—it hesitated a moment before kindling—then as the flame established itself, she opened the door and went up to her bedroom. The sense of being no longer mentally in the dark grew in her as she rose up the dark wide steps, "wide enough"—she repeated to herself the old saying—"to bring a coffin down."

She was now facing something that, no doubt, had power to inflict defeat and dissolution, if you were weak, if you were infected and had no right resistance. But only able to scare you, only able to threaten and howl if you stood your ground.

Certainly she was no longer attacked from within by further misgivings and the distressing feeling that she was at a loss. That did not mean, however, that she was unaware that she was confronted by something very dark or that she had no fears. Indeed her grounds for these rapidly increased. Her brother's behaviour became steadily more strange. Now that he had been able to show, or had been forced to uncover, his real state of mind, a great part of his long-acquired, carefully built up ashlar of impassivity was flaking away.

It was hardly a week after the walk in the garden. He had not referred to that scene. But she noticed that he had not gone into the garden again though she had most days walked in it, hoping thereby to encourage him to come out. The new confidence was naturally a complaint. Again it was about the servants. Family prayers were just completed and the domestic staff, led out by Cook, had just trooped from the room. But he remained standing, looking after them. Then he turned to her and evidently was going to speak, but, after a couple of hesitations, sat down. She noticed that he ate little. Indeed it was not till the afternoon that he managed to say what was on his mind. They were just going into the parlor for tea as they had come in from Evensong, when, as his hand was on the door, he turned and asked,

"Now, don't you notice anything?"

Then, as she did not at once reply he continued, "I am sorry to seem excessively fastidious and I wish to say that it is not a complaint. Perhaps if you notice nothing. . . . But then."—he smiled wryly—"Clement of Alexandria does warn the women on this point, that their olfactory sense is not as keen as man's. . . ." He paused.

'What is it?" she encouraged him.

"I can't help it," he brought up his trouble, "I can't help it. It makes me feel quite ill. It's one of the servants, I know. That dreadfully coarse vulgar scent. They really must be told not to use it. I suppose it is some cheap hair oil."

She breathed in quietly and deeply. She could smell the cedar-wood oil with which the mahogany door by which they stood was polished, the faint scent of the potpourri in the big bowl in the bay window at the other end of the passage, and farthest away the toast which must now have readied the kitchen table ready to advance and be offered with their tea.

She replied quietly, "I am sure that none of the maids use hair-oil." Then seeing his distress increase she added, "I must ask them if they are using any of those rather strong-scented furniture polishes."

She saw the relief on his face as he said, "Yes, yes, that quite possibly might be it. I confess I had not thought of such a, a natural explanation. And you will see that we go back to whatever the unscented variety may have been that was in use previously?"

She assured him that she would,

He did not raise this matter of protest again, but his complaints were now frequent. He went back to his concern with dusting and would ask whether she was really keeping the maids up to their old standard in this new and of course somewhat larger and so more exacting house. Then one day he actually asked her to come into his study.

'You know," he remarked over his shoulder as they went rather hurriedly along the passage, Tin not complaining, I certainly do not want my study turned upside down. But if they do tidy my desk"—now they had entered the room and he took her up to the big desk table where he worked—"then they should not actually leave my writing pad in that state. To quote Scripture, 'the last state is worse than the first.' "

She scanned the site at which he was pointing, going closer both to assure him and to reassure herself. A folio sheet of blotting paper, perfectly fresh, and, on that, some quarto sheets of plain paper also innocent of any blot, mark or stroke of pen or pencil.

"I don't quite understand?" she asked him turning round.

'You don't see!"

She did see the expression in his eyes and that was enough to show that at the least she must say something at once that was positive.

'Til look into the matter myself." she remarked in a cheerful routine tone. And, suiting action to word, she picked up the paper, rolled it together and went toward the door. There she turned round. He was looking after her with an expression half of relief, half of puzzlement. Then as she added, 'Til be back in a moment with dean paper," he smiled at her.

"Very kind of you, very kind." There was real gratitude in his voice.

As she went down the passage, though it was broad day and the sun hot outside, she felt the darkest wave of black fear rise up in her that she had so far had to face. She knew, however, she could endure it. For, deeper than any fear at what might be approaching, she knew there was mounting so strong a pity in her that about the courage she would need she did not have to question.

She did look over the sheets of paper in her room. "Of course there is nothing," she remarked quietly to herself as though checking over an item in household expenses. She went back with them, then, to her brother's room. He was waiting, standing by his desk as she had left him.

'These sheets are clean ones," she remarked, and spread them on the table. He looked at them and then without a word, but granting a small nod, he sat down and, taking up his pen, drew a small sheaf of notes toward him.

For three days he seemed to be working quietly. Still, she was not surprised when he asked her to come with him again, though her heart, she noticed, did sink a little further when instead of going along to his study they mounted the stair and reached his bedroom. It was clear, too, he was in a more nervous state than before. As they entered the room he no longer led but actually gave her a gentle push forward.

"Look at the pillow!" he commanded. "You see, I was right. Whoever makes the bed is really so grossly careless, untidy, disgustingly untidy"—his voice was straining—"squalid, that it is unhygienic. You must speak. . . ."